The computerized information system, which includes means to automatically verify, update and interchange theme park-related data and information, encompasses networked hardware components and distributed software programs and will be used by a variety of theme park environments in connection with the management of the admission, usage and evaluation processes of visitors that will visit these theme park settings.
The intended purpose of the invention is to control the theme parks' operational cost of providing services and products to its visitors and to provide increased convenience and more choices to the visitors. This invention provides solutions to contain these costs while automating the admission task for visitors, streamlining the activities of qualifying and serving visitors with regards to the requested services and/or products, and making the information that relates to the visitor's buying behavior available to the theme park in a real-time manner. This invention also provides benefits to the visitors, while letting visitors tailor their guest card with services/products to fit their particular desire, facilitating the partitioning of services/products within the same guest card, and allowing visitors to manage the money that is loaded into the guest card at any time throughout the visit. As evidence of the date of conception of this invention, the appropriate Disclosure Document No. 313145 was forwarded by the inventor Richard P. Sehr on Jul. 10, 1992 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Heretofore, a variety of prepaid cards and devices, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 5,302,811 issued to Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba on Apr. 12. 1994, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,264,689 granted to Gemplus Card International on Nov. 23, 1993, and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,155,342 granted to Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha on Oct. 13, 1992, have been proposed. None of these proposals of the prior art, however, provide a systems solution for entities that want to use prepaid cards throughout their operations. The limitations of these proposals center around the fact that these inventions focus onto the prepaid cards merely as a device for loading/retrieving money therefrom and not on how to act as a systems integration tool. The proposals of the prior art also do not address the questions of (1) What specific cost savings do the systems facilitate, (2) How the prepaid cards will function in computerized platforms, (3) How and when the cards will handle the exchange of data and information in a real-time manner, (4) What are the privacy concerns and security requirements that are needed, and (5) How the inventions will adopt to future needs and developments. Accordingly, there is a need for a system that provides answers to these issues.